The oldest locomotives that ran on Amtrak

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GG-1 #4935 (repainted into the classic PRR Pullman Green scheme) at the head of the Broadway Limited at Lancaster PA sometime in the 1970s. TBH I'm not sure if Amtrak actually owned this particular GG-1.

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It was among the dozen or so that never got a 9xx number, possibly because it was leased. It was retired in 1981.

Interestingly all the ones that did recieve 9xx numbers were reverted back to 49xx numbers before retirement, to vacate the 9xx numbers block for newly arriving AEM-7s,
 
Fascinating article, thanks for sharing.

That picture of the Penn Central P motor pulling an Amtrak train certainly drives home the message of what sort of antedeluvian equipment was still running back then. Overall the age of the equipment back then, when it was between 30 and 40 years old, was definitely in the "old" category but not really prehistorically so. But it is much more how much technology had advanced in the intervening years that really made these beasts of another era.
 
Interesting how they weren't actually all that old—30 to 40 years. The AEM-7s were running when they were 36 years old, on par with the GG-1s.

Some of the passenger cars were even older. The Heritage Dining Car (#8504) that I rode in back in 2016 was 68 years old at the time I rode it.
 
I think part of what makes/made them seem or look so old was that the industrial design aesthetic changed so much during a relatively short period which really made them age in appearance rapidly more than that they had become functionally and/or technically obsolete.
 
I think part of what makes/made them seem or look so old was that the industrial design aesthetic changed so much during a relatively short period which really made them age in appearance rapidly more than that they had become functionally and/or technically obsolete.
They had a few significant problems that ruled out any attempts to extend their life:

1) Carcinogen in Transformer parts and coolant that leaked.

2) Tied to 25Hz as all auxiliaries depended on 25Hz.

3) Cracks in truck frames.

4) Need to develop nd produce almost all replacement parts in house.

By the time they were retired they were technically more or less completely obsolete.
 
By the time they were retired they were technically more or less completely obsolete.
I'm not arguing...but one of the things I admire about the GG1s is how much they advanced the state of the art, much as the Lima 'Super-Power' Berkshire demonstrator did for steam or the 707 and, before it, DC-3 did for air travel. We really haven't seen quantum leaps like that in quite a while.
 
I'm not arguing...but one of the things I admire about the GG1s is how much they advanced the state of the art, much as the Lima 'Super-Power' Berkshire demonstrator did for steam or the 707 and, before it, DC-3 did for air travel. We really haven't seen quantum leaps like that in quite a while.
Yes. They were technologically cutting edge when they were developed.
 
I'm not arguing...but one of the things I admire about the GG1s is how much they advanced the state of the art, much as the Lima 'Super-Power' Berkshire demonstrator did for steam or the 707 and, before it, DC-3 did for air travel. We really haven't seen quantum leaps like that in quite a while.
It's a sobering thought to think what the last genuine quantum leap was in rail technology rather than re-hashing known concepts with detail improvements.

It is a matter of perspective and personal opinion of course, but for me the original Shinkansen comes to mind, but even that is now 60 years old, putting it far closer to the GG1 than to the present day.
 
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Well, there's actually nothing at a wrong with that in a mature technology such a rail. Mature, proven technologies don't go through dramatic changes (otherwise they would not be considered mature). Incremental improvements, such as increased fuel economy and lower emissions are fine. Even if they do not represent fundamental change.

BTW, I'd consider the advent of practical AC traction a pretty big change in locomotive technology, even if it didn't make a difference in passenger rail.
 
BTW, I'd consider the advent of practical AC traction a pretty big change in locomotive technology, even if it didn't make a difference in passenger rail.
True, and shame on me for not thinking of that.

But even that came into its own in the 1980s to 1990s I suppose, making it 30 to 40 years old now.
 
I consider the European 50 Hz Group and the Japanese Hitachi-Mitsubishi-Toshiba Consortium’s development of practical 25kV electrification technology with practical use of Rectifiers starting in the early 1950s, to have had much broader impact worldwide than earlier usage of bits of the same bag of tricks. It culminated in today’s spectacular use of solid state power electronics.

Abandonment of Railway Electrification in the US pretty much took the US out of the running.
 
I consider the European 50 Hz Group and the Japanese Hitachi-Mitsubishi-Toshiba Consortium’s development of practical 25kV electrification technology with practical use of Rectifiers starting in the early 1950s, to have had much broader impact worldwide than earlier usage of bits of the same bag of tricks. It culminated in today’s spectacular use of solid state power electronics.

Abandonment of Railway Electrification in the US pretty much took the US out of the running.
Again, I'm not arguing. But I'm just wondering what might have proceeded forth if the Milwaukee Road had taken GE up on its early 1970s offer to 'close the gap' between Avery and Othello in the Pacific Extension electrification while also supplying updated electric freight locomotives and financing the whole deal through GE capital?

Instead, all the wires came down, motivated by a short-term spike in the price of copper (which crashed again before the scrap could be brought to market)...and followed immediately by the sheikhs resetting the gas pumps in 1973. Couple that with the ongoing bookkeeping errors which hid the true profitability of the Extension to the Milwaukee and...well, the rest is history.

To bring this back to Amtrak: I like to think that with the lessons which could have been learned during this exercise we might have been in a better position to develop a truly home-grown electric passenger locomotive in the late 1970s and, perhaps, been able to pull the trigger on electrifying the Michigan Central line which ended up going to Amtrak.
 
I completely agree with you. The US voluntarily took itself out of the running. The rest is history.
This is a tragedy. As late as the mid 20th Century the US was leading technologically in terms of railroad technology, and European and other manufacturers were either building stuff under license or doing their best to copy it. Dutch railfans for example will tell you that that 1200 Series was among the best classes of electric locomotive ever delivered to the Netherlands. They had a record for being robust, verging on indestructible. The last were more than 60 years old when finally taken out of service. In Spain the GM diesels were nicknamed Rambos by the train engineers because no matter how you mistreated them, they continued to pull reliably. The European engines of the same era were much more capricious in comparison and would punish you unforgivably for the slightest handling error, and had much lower reliability and availability to boot.

All this advantage was lost and today the situation has reversed with much of what is new in passenger rail in the US being European or Japanese technology built under license.
 
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